


Dying on Top of the World

by kryptidkat



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Album)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Language, Gen, no beta we die like men, u know i'm all about that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-05 18:20:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20277703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kryptidkat/pseuds/kryptidkat
Summary: For the past several weeks the patrols have been brutal. Party Poison and Jet Star find themselves separated from the rest of the crew, stranded in an old Zone 3 fire tower. When Party has a bit of an overdue mental breakdown, Jet’s the only one there to talk him down.Oneshot. Jet’s POV.





	Dying on Top of the World

**Author's Note:**

> I didn’t know it until I started writing this, but Party turns into a total a-hole when he’s just around Jet lmao. Idk what about Jet brings it out in him. He’s just so fun to annoy that Party can’t resist I guess haha. (Tbh though, I think what's probably actually going on is that it's just another of his facade tactics...)
> 
> Anyway, this fic includes references to both Aftermath and The Scarecrow Slayer, if you haven't read those yet, so check 'em out if you're curious.

The thing about Party was he liked to push his luck a little too far, Jet thought as the trans am sputtered to a halt in the middle of the highway. 

Party pumped the gas pedal a few times. Nothing happened. 

Jet crossed his arms over his chest and watched the fuzzy dice Kobra had insisted on putting in the windshield slowly stop swinging. They really needed to get rid of those things. 

"I told you we should have filled up in Two," he said. 

"We almost made it," Party protested. "What is it, like, four miles to the Dead Pegasus?” 

They both sat there, listening to the engine ping. 

“Just get the can,” said Jet. 

Party groaned and slid out of the driver’s seat, slamming his door, and went around to open the trunk and retrieve the emergency fuel. 

He appeared at Jet’s open window a few moments later. 

“Um,” Party said. He held up the gas can. 

“Ghoul didn’t fill it up, did he.”

“Nope.” 

Jet sighed, and waited for Party to launch into a typical swear-peppered tirade.

Party apparently couldn’t find the energy to spare. He set the can down and walked a few paces away from the car. Just walked. He’d dropped his characteristic swagger several days ago.

He looked as worn out as Jet felt, Jet thought idly as he watched him flip on his transmitter and scroll through the channels. It took a helluva lot of dust and grime and sleepless nights and skipped meals to make someone as beautiful as Party Poison look like shit, and he sure looked like shit now. His hair, usually glossy and perfectly tousled, was unkempt and greasy. (At some point, Jet was pretty sure he'd attempted to use a handful of dirt as dry shampoo, with predictably unfortunate results.) There were violet circles under his eyes, and his jacket hung loose on his small frame. He looked positively _haggard_, and too tired to hide it anymore besides. 

Party spoke quietly into the receiver. Nothing. 

He tried again. 

This time it crackled in response. Jet couldn’t make out the staticky voice on the other end. 

“Hey. You good?”

_Yfjkg. Jkfjd lkgl hlgk sd ytkjjajsfgj._

“Ghoul there?”

_Hg’z jfslginf._

“Shame. Kick his ass for me when he wakes up.” 

_Wwlkj’j jd dl?_

“Just do it. Listen, where are you?”

_Klffjls jhk wetrj kjgjfklsjlfd. Fgjkin dlkjs ejkvlksdjr. Dlasjlsj tkj jlkdl._

“Okay. Well, keep your mask on. And, uh...hey. See you soon.”

Kobra, then. Party refused to say the word _goodbye_ to his brother. At least, Jet had never heard him do it.

The transmitter crackled for several long seconds before the voice broke through one last time. 

_Jkds lkj sngn._

Party clicked it off and ducked his head, pushing his yellow mask up briefly to rub at his eyes.

Then he readjusted it and came back over to Jet’s window. 

“K says they’re both still holed up in Five,” he said. “They’re fine, but they can’t pick us up. Got a couple dozen pigs crawling around out there by the sound of it. Cherri still has the Girl, last they heard.” 

Jet sighed. “Okay.” That was one less thing to worry about, anyway. He ground a palm into his eyepatch. Whatever had happened to piss BL/IND off so bad this time, at least it wasn’t their fault. 

Somehow, miraculously, the City hadn’t yet gotten reliable intel that they were alive, even though rumors flew in the wake of their reported deaths, and copycats were bound to pop up as well. At one point they’d even sent a Scarecrow agent packing who’d seen Kobra and Party face to face, but nothing had come of it. (Jet had to smile whenever he imagined how that conversation must have gone down. _‘I was attacked by the Venom Brothers, Madam Director, I swear!’ ‘The dead Venom Brothers. Right.’_) 

They'd pretty quickly given up trying to steer clear of other zonedwellers. Locking yourself away in a hole underground and jumping at your own shadow was no way to live. They'd learned that fast enough. But despite the sightings, they was still somehow the desert’s best-kept secret. 

Dr. Death Defying, thank the Witch for him, played an invaluable role in that. He’d hidden out at the diner with them for a while after the raid, and he still had some of his record collection stashed there, but he moved his station around pretty frequently these days to keep the dracs off his trail. He and Chimp and GoGo had taken the brunt of the search parties, after all, having been the last to be seen with BL/IND’s priceless bounty. On his station, he was careful to only allude to the four in the most cryptic terms, buried deep in his traffic reports. He’d been DJ’ing since before most tumbleweeds had been born and hadn’t gotten hacked by the City yet. Still, you never knew who was listening. 

And as the moments of silence and memorials and eulogies playing on radios across the zones from the dozen other pirate stations finally died down to a trickle and ceased altogether -- one couldn’t afford to mourn long in the zones, even for legends such as them -- new escapades began to spread through the airwaves. Whispers of four almost-ghosts. 

Keeping their ears to the ground and filtering through the incoming tips and requests and gossip and outright lies, the DJs heard it all. 

_Mister Doctor Death Defying, sir? -- quit messing with it, Banshee, I got the right channel, WKIL, see? -- Sorry, Mister Death, sir, I just wanted to report me and my friends, we got jumped by like, a bazillion Draculoids in Zone Five and this totally shiny crew came charging in and saved our hides and anyway, we didn’t get a good look at ‘em before they took off but we wanted to call it in just to say it was pretty milkshake of them, if they’re out there... _

_PyroPunk! Dude. Do I have a hot tip for you. Guess who waltzed into the Oasis last night? Jet Star and Fun Ghoul! I was too wasted to go talk to ‘em and get the story, but I heard they got dusted on some badass raid last month so that must’ve been bullshit. That or there’s a couple sick bastards out here with hella good imitations…_

_GoGo, your people got any high-charge batteries a runner could bring out by the end of the week? I got four old friends in the store looking for any you got. Oh, and a box of Poison Red..._

_Hooligan, lemme know if you get word of a Pontiac Firebird being spotted in the area. Some assholes just went barrelling through my front yard, and my clothesline, mind you, with a whole gaggle of dracs on their tail. Whoever they are, I owe ‘em a piece of my mind and my fist..._

_Cherri, hey man, listen, I’m pretty sure I saw the Kobra Kid out by the mailbox the other day. Coulda been a mirage but I swear it was him. Didn’t get a good look before he disappeared, though. Just thought you'd wanna know…_

But when the DJs broke the static and let any news go live about the mysterious figures at all, it seemed to be an unspoken pact between them to follow Dr. D’s lead.

The mechanic. The viper. The bombmaker. The firebrand. 

They were never named. (Kobra especially seemed to enjoy his newfound cryptid status, even though it meant he got punched a lot whenever he ran into any old pals, just to check if he was real.) What the Girl’s fate had been went unspoken entirely. 

Jet knew the respite couldn’t last. He knew it was inevitable that, in time, there would be bright red targets painted on their backs again, even brighter than those every killjoy wore. But he was grateful for the anonymity all the same. 

And now, Witch only knew why, the zones had been swarming with dracs for nearly two weeks. Him and Party had been running in One when it started and had been trying to rejoin the others ever since, but there was a blockade on the Getaway Mile and it’d taken them this long to find an alternate route while avoiding the rest of the patrols. 

Which had led to them being stranded in the middle of nowhere, with nothing in sight except miles and miles of highway and sand and bright blue sky. 

If he was in a better mood, it would’ve been beautiful. 

Jet sighed again.

“First order of business: Get to the next station,” he said. “Second order of business: Get the fuck out of here.” 

Party propped his yellow mask up onto his forehead. “Third order of business. Kill Ghoul.” 

“Sounds like a plan.”

Jet got out of the car, grabbing his and Party’s canteens as he went, and they started the long trek down the cracked asphalt road. Jet was _this _close to successfully getting Party out of sight of the trans am before Party’s separation anxiety kicked in. Then Party dragged him back and made him help him put the car in neutral and roll it off the road behind some scrub so it was at least somewhat out of sight.

After that setback, they finally started off for real. 

The back of Jet’s neck prickled, and not just from sweat. He hated being stuck in the open like this. 

Party must have felt similar. He glanced over his shoulder. “There hasn’t been much activity out here, has there?” he said. 

Jet surveyed the vast flat plains around them. “At least we’ll see ‘em coming?” he offered. 

“Hm.” Party didn’t look reassured. 

An hour or so passed. It felt more like a week. Jet became painfully aware of an impressive blister forming on his ankle, thanks to the hole in his sock. 

Party handed Jet the gas can so he could open his water bottle. He took a careful sip, then splashed a sparse amount onto his face and shook his hair like a dog, flinging droplets everywhere. 

“Gross, Party.” Jet wiped the splatter off his cheek. 

“What? It’s fuckin’ hot,” Party groaned dramatically and dragged his boots. “Oh, Destroya, are we there yet?” 

Jet was suddenly very done with Party’s shit. “Save your breath,” he snapped. Did Party get on everybody’s nerves this much, or was it just him? 

They trudged on down the shoulder of the highway in silence. It couldn’t be much farther now. Jet tried to wrestle his curls back into a ponytail to get them off his neck with the elastic from around his wrist. It snapped. 

Jet tossed it away. Fine then. He’d just roast. 

“Smilers,” Party said. 

Jet’s hand went to his gun. “Where?”

“Dead ahead, captain. Twelve o’clock.” Party nodded further up the road. He pulled his mask down over his eyes.

“Sonofabitch.” Jet shaded his eye with his other hand. The horizon wavered with heat, but he could make out two drac squad cars coming their way. 

Wasn’t that just typical. Jet reached for the aviators that were hooked onto his collar. (They’d have to do, even though they didn’t cover much of his face and sat weirdly over his eyepatch. His rebreather helmet was in the car, and that thing was too hot to wear most of the time anyway.)

Party glanced back the way they’d come. They hadn’t passed so much as a tree big enough to hide behind for a good half mile. “The hell’re we gonna do? We’re sitting targets out here." 

"No one looks up, right?" Jet said slowly. 

Party swiveled to see what he was looking at. 

Ahead of them, a few dozen yards off the side of the highway, rose a tall, spindly old fire tower. 

“Ooh. Shiny,” Party said. “Yeah, that’s our best bet. Come on, we can make it.” 

He broke into a sprint. More reluctantly, Jet followed, already regretting making the suggestion. 

A total daredevil, Party loved high places. Jet did not. 

When they reached the bottom of the tower, he hesitated. The structure loomed over him, creaking in the slight breeze. Its rickety metal staircase stretched up ridiculously far, held together only by rusting bolts. 

Party was already a couple flights up before he noticed Jet wasn’t following. He poked his head over the railing. “Now what?”

“Heights...” Jet swallowed, mouth suddenly gone dry. “Aren’t really my thing.” 

Party frowned. "It was your idea."

Jet glared up at him. "Do you see any other options?” 

“It’s not that bad, Spaceman! Don’t be a sissy.” 

Jet had never been good with this shit, even before he lost his eye. And now that his depth perception and balance wasn’t as reliable as it used to be, the idea of trying to climb anything made him even more nervous. 

He didn’t know how to tell Party any of that, though. 

When Jet still didn’t budge Party rolled his eyes, but he scrambled back down, making the metal frame ring and vibrate noisily all the way up the tower.

“You first?” he offered generously, hopping off the last step. “If you slip I’ll grab ya?”

Jet snorted. “Right. Break both our falls, more like.”

Party shrugged. “Either way, we gotta move.”

“Fine.” Jet wiped his damp palms on his pants and stepped onto the first stair. Okay, not so bad. He focused on putting one foot in front of the other, keeping a tight grip on the railing. Party came up behind. 

“Last one up’s drac meat,” said Party. 

“Not funny.”

“It’s a little funny!”

After a few long, long minutes of careful climbing, Jet craned his head up to gauge how much further. Halfway, maybe?

“Don’t look down,” Party said.

He was probably trying to be helpful, but it was the worst thing he could have said, because of course Jet promptly looked. 

The ground tilted unnervingly far below his feet like a bad acid trip. Much too far away for comfort. Jet grabbed the railing even harder, knuckles going white. He swallowed hard. “Thanks for that.” 

“Sorry! Sorry. Please don’t hurl on me.” 

Jet wanted to flip him off, but that would mean he’d have to let go. “No less than you’d deserve, asshole.” 

They reached the top without further incident. Jet quickly sat down on the floor. Up this far, the structure’s sway was even more exaggerated. 

Party plopped down next to him. The sudden movement made the tower shake harder. 

Jet grabbed his sleeve. “Don’t _do _that.” 

He took a deep breath and quickly scanned their new hideout. Not really anything to conceal themselves behind, up here. A slatted safety railing went around the edge of the small, cobwebby platform, and a pole on each corner held up the thin flat roof. The platform held a small bench, an electric lantern, and a dead bird. 

Beyond the platform, it was all sky. They could see for miles. Jet even thought he could make out the faint skyline of the City on the horizon. 

He scooted closer to the edge and looked down – more _out_ than straight down, which was still not great, but it was manageable. The vehicles were approaching, tires stirring up a cloud of dust, tiny as toy cars in a sandbox.

There was nothing to do except keep still and hope for the best. 

“Man, if they see us...” Jet murmured. 

Party flashed his sharpest grin. “The wrath of Destroya strikes from above?” he said hopefully. He made a jumping-off motion with his fingers. 

Jet smacked his arm. “Shut up,” he said, but he had to smile. 

The two vans passed them by. 

Jet exhaled and pulled off his sunglasses. 

“The hell?” Party said. 

Jet jerked his head up again. The vehicles had stopped in the road, still well within sight of the tower. He didn’t even bother trying to count the number of dracs that emerged. 

“Pigs and their fucking clown cars,” Party muttered in grudging amazement as the BL/IND operatives kept piling out. “It’s a wholeass circus.” 

“They better not be setting up camp,” growled Jet. He didn’t want to be up here a second longer than he had to. 

“Nah. Looks like a routine sweep,” Party said, as the units began to fan out. “Hunker down.” 

The thing about Party, though, was that he was shit at following his own advice. While the dracs combed the surrounding plains, he tapped his foot. Drummed his fingers on the floor. Unholstered his gun, ran automatically through his battery-checking routine. Holstered it again. Resumed tapping his foot. 

Jet ground his teeth. 

“We could take ‘em,” Party said finally. 

“No we couldn’t,” said Jet. 

Party let it drop. Eventually he got bored enough to lay down with a hand behind his head, staring at the wasps’ nests on the ceiling. For lack of anything more useful to do, Jet joined him. 

The next thing he knew Party was elbowing his side. “They didn’t find anything. They’re leaving.” 

Jet sat up. The sky around them was streaked with pink. Below, the patrols had begun to regroup. Jet wondered vaguely how it’d gotten so late. He must have drifted off, exhaustion finally outweighing adrenaline. 

By the time the last door slammed and the units rolled away, the sun had sunk below the distant dunes and the night insects were humming. 

“Thank the Witch. Let’s move.” Party clambered to his feet, yanking his mask down around his neck. 

“Sit,” Jet said. “We can’t go anywhere tonight.” They didn’t have a light source, and it’d be a foolhardy idea in the cold anyway. 

Party picked up the electric lantern from the corner and toggled the switch. Nothing happened. “And we’re gonna freeze in a few hours besides. Fuckin’ patrols. Fuckin’ dracs. Can’t go two godsdamned hours in any direction anymore without running into the bastards.”

“It’ll let up. It always does.”

“Oh sure,” Party snarled. “Would that be before or after one of us gets ghosted, or goes boots up from heatstroke? Or hypothermia? Or starvation?” 

Whoa, geez. Jet rummaged around in his jacket pockets for anything to eat. He hadn’t expected to be away from the car overnight or he would’ve grabbed more supplies. Party Poison and low blood sugar was always a bad combination. 

“Scorpions? Dehydration? Gang wars? Thank you,” Party broke off his rant politely to accept the nutrient bar Jet offered. 

And hurled it out into the dark. 

Jet blinked. Before he could protest the loss of their only food, Party turned on him, glaring up at him with a savageness on his face that wasn’t hunger. 

“There’s no end to them! What are we supposed to do, spend the rest of our lives shooting down dracs like cockroaches?” Party started pacing back and forth across the platform. “Keep playing fuckin’ Whack-A-Mole with ‘em til the day we drop dead?” 

There was a dangerous undertone to Party’s words that Jet couldn’t place, but the way Party was making the whole tower rattle was more of an immediate concern to him. “Party, please stop, this whole thing’s gonna – ” 

“DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO! KILLJOYS MAKE SOME FUCKING NOISE!” Party screamed into the listening desert, hanging precariously far over the railing. He whirled back around and pointed a finger at him like a knife. “We should be _doing_ something! What _are _we doing? Screwing around with concerts and races and derbies while the whole world goes to hell? We should be rallying every soul we’ve got, storming the city, burning BL/IND to the ground!” He grabbed a fistful of red hair. “The people, the droids, everyone – they’re living their whole lives in a lie, they don’t even get a _choice_, and – and –”

For the first time, Party faltered. The thought struck Jet that this might be the only chance he’d have to get a word in edgewise for a while. “Party – ” 

“ – what the _fuck_ were we thinking?” Party cut him off, voice beginning to go hoarse. “That we’re some kind of _rebellion?_ These pigs have us running so fast it’s all we can to do survi – we eat dog food, Jet! _Dog food!_ Why shouldn’t we march right back inside those walls and ask for forgiveness? ‘Hi, very sorry to have tried to upset your precious new world order! Give me the pills, the IVs, shave my fucking head!’”

Even though Jet had never set foot inside the City except during the raid, the way Party spat out the words made his pulse race with dread. He’d never seen Party like this before. Should he have seen this coming? Had he missed some warning sign that he was going to snap? Had Jet unknowingly said something, a phrase that accidentally triggered some kind of BL/IND sleeper cell protocol buried in his head? 

“’Long live Madame Director! Have a better day!’ Fuck this shit! We’re ants waiting to get stepped on! It’s all a game! We’re nothing but a joke to them!” 

The thing about Party was that he had a voice capable of commanding armies and, bent to this purpose, Jet was only now realizing just how dangerous such a voice could be. And there was no one here but him to take the full force of it. Jet felt sick, sicker even than he’d felt trying to climb the stairs earlier – because there was some terrible truth to Party’s words, distraught as he was. 

All he could do was listen, paralyzed, as Party stood on the top of the world and dragged its curtains back and exposed the gears and strings and puppetmasters and all the twisted audiences they were performing for. 

“They could exterminate us all in a heartbeat! They still have bombs, right? What’s stopping them from bombing the everloving shit out of us? Well guess fucking what – they need an enemy, don’t they? Keep the citizens scared and obedient, keep ‘em in the city? We’re playing right into their hands! We’ve always been!” 

Party kicked the bench so hard it skidded across the floor and bounced off the opposite wall. Then he laughed horribly, a hopeless cackle that sent a chill down Jet’s spine. A madman’s laugh. 

Now Jet was afraid for him. 

Maybe this was it. Maybe this was when Party finally cracked and Jet would have to witness it and wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing. 

Party clawed off the yellow mask hanging around his neck like it burned. He looked right at Jet, eyes glittering in the darkness. 

“There is no rebellion, Jet,” Party said. 

For a terrible moment Jet thought he was going to throw the mask, too. 

Then Party groped for anything to keep his balance as he stumbled, and quietly began to hyperventilate.

Jet wavered, frozen by a sudden rush of conflict. For a second he was wildly, wildly glad to see Party clutching at the railing like a lifeline and trying not to collapse as his lungs hitched uncontrollably, because even though he’d rarely had to deal with Party when he was in a full-blown panic since Kobra was usually there to whisk him away somewhere quiet to calm him down, anything was better than watching helplessly as Party raged and screamed and tried to tear down his own every last hope and the last hope of anyone in his path. 

Party was doggedly not collapsing, but he was hardly standing upright anymore, either. Destroya, he was going to pass out. Jet’s medic instincts kicked in, and in two strides he crossed the platform to kneel down in front of Party, trying to get him to make eye contact. “Hey, hey. Sit down.” He ran a hand down Party’s arm. 

Party shied away from his touch, recoiling into the corner. He flinched when Jet tried to steady him and started gasping even more frantically. 

Big mistake. Jet snatched his hand away. Fuck, all he wanted to do was scoop Party up and cradle him against his chest like a little kid and make it all stop, but it was obvious that Party in this state somehow saw him as a threat. 

Not wanting to make it any worse than it already was, Jet slowly sat down and scooted over until he was just within arm’s reach, careful not to make any sudden movements. He could barely make out the shivering heap in the shadows that was Party, with knees pulled up to his chest and hands over his ears like someone or something was making an unbearable noise that only he could hear. 

The sight of him trying to fight it alone, like Jet wasn’t even there, made Jet feel even more useless. What would Kobra do now? 

“Party. Uh, listen to my voice if you can, okay?” he said, as steadily as he could. “I’m not gonna grab you. I'm right here, though. If you want, all you have to do is hold out your hand. I’m not far – you can reach, see?” 

Party showed no sign he heard. 

“You’re gonna black out on me or something if you don’t start relaxing, so please try to take some nice deep breaths, yeah? We’re perfectly safe now. Uh. Yeah. Sorry, you probably know that and you can’t help it anyway and that’s gotta be hell, uh, but you’ve done this before, lots of times, right? It’ll pass soon. You’re doing real good,” he added, even though he hadn’t noticed any difference. 

He didn’t really expect a response at this point, but he thought he heard Party take a slightly longer gasp. 

“There you go. Just keep doing that...” 

Jet kept talking through the next several minutes – anything vaguely reassuring that came to him. He hoped he was actually being helpful. 

Gradually, in stops and starts, Party forced his breathing to normalize. He’d get pretty far only to be hit with another wave of it, lose control, and have to begin all over again. 

He fought his way through that a couple times before he managed to unclench his hands from the sides of his head and wrap them tightly around his torso. Jet waited to see if it was going to get worse again. 

Party just stared at his knees and sat there hugging himself. Jet couldn’t hear his breathing at all anymore. Guess that was a good thing.

The yellow mask was lying next to Jet’s foot. He picked it up and held it out to Party like a peace offering, hoping it wouldn’t meet the same fate as the nutrient bar. 

Party reluctantly untangled one of his arms to take it. He made no move to crush it in his fist or fling it from the tower, and Jet’s shoulders released a tension he didn’t know he’d been holding. 

Now maybe Party would sling the mask back around his neck and laugh, a real laugh, and make some self-deprecating remark about how not sleeping for three days could make you awful cranky or something like that, and everything would be milkshake again. 

But Party turned the mask over in his hands without recognition, like an abandoned child’s toy one would pick up from boredom off the side of the road. 

“They already won,” he murmured. “It’s over.” 

Shit, okay, he was still on this ride.

And trite reassurances would mean nothing to him now. Jet tried to think of something to say, anything at all – any small truth to counter the almost tangible defeat hanging thick over Party, threatening to pull them both in. 

“Maybe...” he said. “Maybe they’re underestimating us.” 

Party shrugged scornfully. 

It wasn’t exactly an uncalled-for shrug. Successfully rallying even a few hundred killjoys to wage full-fledged war against BL/IND would be a miracle, and for what. They’d be gunned down in minutes. 

But maybe they didn’t need an army. Maybe they never had. 

“There’s the Girl,” Jet said. 

“The Girl?” Party lifted his head, startled eyes locking on to Jet’s. 

“They’re scared of her, Party. Hella scared. I’ll be damned if I know why, but they are. Maybe we’ll figure it out, I...” Jet shook his head. He wasn’t sure what he was trying to say. “I hope we do.” 

Party didn’t reply. He nodded briefly, seemingly lost in thought. 

“If we can keep her safe, if we can just do that...” Jet persisted. “I think that’s all we have to do, man, because, because...shit, whatever it is, she could be the key to all of it. It’s her. It has to be her, Party.” 

It was a shot in the dark. It was the only shot they had. 

Party looked back down at his hands. 

“I was going to save the world, you know,” he said. 

And then he was crying – hot angry tears he couldn’t stop, and he did reach out then, grabbing onto Jet’s jacket like he’d rather be punching something but there was nothing up here to fight, nothing but a void sky and the cold night air and Jet, warm and solid and unmovable. Party probably didn’t even want him – he probably wanted his brother, or Ghoul, both of whom seemed to _get_ Party in ways that no one else did and Witch help him, Jet was just Jet, but he couldn’t leave Party like that. 

It wasn't the time to try to force him to stop, even though dehydration was a real risk. Nor was it the time for a gentle hand or comforting words. So Jet put an arm around him, and that was really all he could do. 

That was the thing about Party. Party saw the world in black and white – technicolor and monochrome, more like – and simply couldn’t reconcile the muddied tangle of reality with his vision of how things _should be_. With that magnetism and swagger and bloodred hair and a smile that could start a wildfire, it was as if he’d walked straight out of one of those superhero films where the bad guys lost and the good guys always won.

For the first time, Jet could imagine how vulnerable that could make a person like that, and a new fear settled into his chest – the fear of how easily the weight of such a brutally real world could crush him. 

A savior complex like Party’s must be a heavy thing to bear. 

What was Jet supposed to tell the rest of the crew, when he saw them again, if Party fell apart entirely tonight? What would he tell _Kobra?_ What if they made it through this, only for it to happen again? What if this was just the first of a series of increasingly worse meltdowns, one of which would finally break something in him for good? 

Jet couldn’t afford to think like that. He couldn’t. Years of bone-wearying running and starving and sweating and fighting and surviving had brought Party to this cruel, unforeseen crossroads, and what he became now was entirely up to him. 

So Jet tried to have a little faith in the tiny killjoy curled sobbing into his side and prayed – Witch, Jet prayed – that he would still be sane when the sun came up in the morning. 

At least Party wasn’t sobbing like he was angry anymore. He was sobbing like he was _tired_, too tired to really sob properly but too tired to stop, either. He’d wear himself down soon, Jet hoped, and might feel a little better. 

Party did stop a few minutes later. After a while he reached for his bandana to scrub at his face. Then he burrowed closer into Jet – as much for warmth as comfort, now. 

Jet’s hands and face were getting kind of numb, now that he thought about it. The air around them was pretty cold. Soon it would be frigid. Party’s teeth started chattering a little.

He wondered if he had enough mass to survive the night without a jacket. He didn’t know, but he was about to shrug his leather bomber off to wrap around Party in addition to Party’s own blue one when he saw something glinting on the far side of the platform. 

The bench Party kicked had fallen open when it landed. It was a storage compartment bench, and among the junk spilling out of it was one of those crinkly metallic emergency blankets. 

Jet said a silent prayer of thanks to the Witch and went to retrieve it, shaking it out and making sure it was tucked securely around Party before sitting down again and pulling his half over himself as best he could. Party wordlessly scooted back in. 

The two of them huddled there together, and as Jet waited for the sunrise with Party’s warm shoulder against his, he was almost able to forget how high up and exposed their precarious little shelter really was. 

Party only said one more thing that night. His voice was raspy and faint. Barely there at all. 

“Would you rather go to hell than purgatory, Jet?” 

Jet didn’t know how to answer.

~~~

Later, much later, when the Four found each other again, he tried to talk to Kobra about it, but he had to wait until Kobra let go of Party first. Once he finally did, it was Ghoul’s turn. A little to Jet’s surprise, Party made no effort to hold onto his grudge. “You owe me a can of gas, motherfucker,” was all he said, and slipped comfortably into his embrace. They were nearer in stature to each other than either of the rest of them, so any given time they were together that they weren’t fighting, it was a pretty safe bet they’d be all over one another. 

Fortunately, it gave Jet the chance to catch Kobra’s eye and jerk his head at him, beckoning him over where they could talk.

“I thought you should know that, uh, when we were out there, he…he kind of freaked out,” Jet said once they were alone.

“He does that,” Kobra said mildly. But he was studying Jet as if trying to confirm there wasn’t anything more serious underlying his words. 

“It wasn’t like usual. He...I worry about him.”

Kobra just snorted at that, like, _And you think I don’t?_

“Kobra,” Jet chastised. He was trying to be communicative. Kobra could at least make an attempt to return the favor. “It was different, worse, like he...oh, I don’t know. Forget it.”

“No, what? What did he say?”

Oh, _now_ Kobra wanted to know. Jet shook his head. “Just...shit about this not being worth it.” He gestured vaguely to the diner and the entirety of the surrounding desert. “All of it. I, I tried to talk some sense back into him, but that’s not the kind of thing Party just says on a whim, is it?” Yeah, he’d been run ragged and sleep deprived and half-starved at the time. And yet...

“What’re you saying?” Kobra said.

“I don’t know! I just don’t want to see him gi...” 

Jet stopped himself. It really didn’t bear thinking about. And he couldn’t think of how to explain that the way he saw it, Party was the one who fueled their crew – hell, half the zones, too, it seemed – with their conviction and defiance and fire. That in spite of all his infuriating habits and pettiness and general dumbassery and downright concerning anxiety issues he still somehow _embodied_ the cause, was still a vivid reminder of their insurrection, a lightning rod for their passion, a living symbol of the blood boiling in their veins. If Korse himself was ever around to hear one of Party’s speeches, Jet wouldn’t be surprised if he started cheering right along with the joys. 

Party’s words had power when Party believed them himself, and the things he’d said in the tower had haunted Jet ever since, even though Party acted the next morning like nothing had happened. In those dark moments he had sowed a seed of doubt that Jet couldn’t quite shake, couldn’t quite reason away.

He’d done his best to talk Party down that night, remind him what they were really here to do – that the best revenge was a life well lived and that being a killjoy wasn’t about executing grand schemes to bring a global government to its knees as much as it was about having your friends’ backs and bleeding for the people you love and writing graffiti on their graves when they were gone. He wasn’t sure it had been enough. 

He wondered if he could get him to go talk to Dr. D again. Party got an old, old look in his eyes sometimes that reminded Jet uncannily of him. The war vet was several decades Party’s senior, and yet something was the same about the vacant, haunted expression that often came over their faces when they didn’t think anyone was watching. For a while at least, he’d done a little better after talking to him last, right after the raid...

“He’ll be fine,” Kobra said, breaking him out of his reverie. “He’s Party.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know,” said Jet, and they left it at that. 

He didn’t mention the last thing Party had said. 

**Author's Note:**

> Random closing thoughts:  
1) YOOOOOO THIS GOT HECKA SAD AT THE END OOPS  
2) "A savior complex like Party’s must be a heavy thing to bear" more like God has struck him for his hubris and his work is never finished lmao  
3) It was so fun to try to write Jet's POV for the first time, even though Party ended up hogging all the attention (big surprise lol). But that's the thing, isn't it? Jet doesn't think of himself at all very much; he's too busy worrying about everybody else  
4) Jet. just....Jet. ohm y gosh he's so. STEADY. i’m overwhelmed. love is stored in the me sdjfdkjlfdf. Let's hear it for Jet, guys. sound off in the comments n give him the love he deserves !! kryptidkat out


End file.
